It is often highly desirable to locate residences, businesses, farms and other establishments nearby bodies of water such as streams, rivers and lakes for aesthetic and commercial reasons. Depending upon weather conditions, elevation and other factors, many locations experience flooding from time-to-time which can create devastating material damage and life-threatening situations.
Locations that are particularly susceptible to flooding are often at least partially protected by earthen dikes, levees or other permanent structures erected along the banks of a body of water. Despite these measures, flood waters may crest above the level of permanent structures thus exposing establishments and residents to physical danger and economic loss. In other areas where flooding may occur only periodically, permanent flood barrier structures are often not employed at all.
The solution suggested in the prior art to both of the situations noted above is the erection of temporary flood barriers atop permanent structures or along the banks of a body of water with no permanent flood protection. The most common form of temporary flood protection is sand bags which are stacked atop one another to form a wall. The bags are typically made of burlap and filled with sand or other local fill material. While temporary sand bag walls provide some degree of protection from flood waters, they are highly labor intensive and time consuming to construct. Further, the sand bags are usually not reusable and must be disposed of after the flood danger has passed which is costly and creates a disposal problem. Moreover, sand bag walls tend to topple over if the flood water crests at or above the height of such walls, and can become structurally weakened, when saturated, to the point of failure.
A variety of other designs have been proposed in the prior art to mitigate the damage that can be caused by flooding. Inflatable barrier walls have been suggested, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,712,998; 5,984,577 and 5,538,360. Wall structures formed of aluminum, plastic or other materials are also common. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,690,865; 6,551,025 and 7,214,005. Further, modular units that are connected end-to-end to form a flood barrier wall have been suggested, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,394,705.
All of the designs noted above suffer from one or more deficiencies. Those that are intended for a single use, such as sand bags, are of dubious economic value and create a disposal problem. Many temporary structures are bulky, cumbersome to erect and disassemble, and, require substantial space for storage. The cost of storage alone for units that are not needed for relatively long periods of time may be prohibitively expensive for communities, and especially for individual owners of residences and/or businesses.